Revelations
by GeorgieHaast
Summary: In which Sirius begins to question his parents


**23rd December 1966**

 **Revelations**

The snow was everywhere, coating the world in a blanket of silence. Sirius Black awoke on the day before Christmas Eve noticing the change in light from the window. The world outside had to have been charmed or transfigured: some kind of last minute decoration by his parents to impress the guests who would be arriving tomorrow. It was Grimmauld Place's turn to host Christmas and everything had to be perfect. Malfoy Manor had been beautiful the previous year but it had still been nothing on Uncle Cygnus' house the year before that. Sirius couldn't remember it particularly but from the way his mother kept fussing over how to be better than her brother he must've pulled off something amazing.

Christmas in the Black house was not about generosity or love - it was a show of power and wealth: who could give the biggest most extravagant presents; who could transform their house the most; who had the best house elves for cooking. All one big competition, but Sirius had never known any different.

So when he looked out of his window and saw children, his age, playing in the snow, he was confused. Shouldn't they be back at home practising their dinner etiquette? Didn't they have robe fittings to go to? Sirius would have ignored it but they looked so… happy. It was only 7:00, his parents wouldn't notice him for a least another hour so if he was quick…

Walburga and Orion Black were too engrossed in their seating plan to notice their oldest son sneaking out of the front door, wrapped up in all his warmest clothes.

Sirius closed the door behind him as quietly as he could, still slightly shocked that he'd managed to get out without anyone noticing. He spared the house one last glance before running across the park to the street on the other side.

The group of children were currently rolling the snow into a giant ball which they then played on top of an even larger ball of snow which was already on the ground. Eventually, one of them turned around and noticed Sirius standing there: "Hey! Come help us finish him, we're almost done but the more the merrier."

Sirius was a bit confused about what they were even doing so decided to revert to polite conversation which was much more his area of knowledge. "What's your name?" he asked.

"Max," the boy replied. "And these are Mike, Harry and Dorothy but everyone calls her Dot."

"Sirius," he held out a hand for Max to shake.

Max just looked slightly offended: "Of course I'm serious, you got a problem with our other names?"

"What?" Sirius tried to sort through the past conversation to where he'd gone wrong and then realised: "No, my name is Sirius. Sirius Orion Black, it's a stupid name really but it's what I've got."

"Oh, sorry." Max shook his hand. "Which house are you in? I've never seen you around here before."

"I live in Number twel-thirteen." Sirius amended, suddenly remembering the muggle probably didn't even know Number 12 existed. Orion had cast 'notice me not' charms over the whole house. It took a lot of concentration to keep it in your line of vision and was almost impossible if you didn't know where it was.

He hoped that none of the children actually lived in Number 13 because that would've lead to awkward questions. Luckily though, Max seemed to accept the lie and simply gestured for Sirius to come help them add onto the giant mound of snow.

Just as Sirius was walking over, something cold and hard suddenly hit him on the back of the head. He whirled around quickly, looking for who had attacked him, wondering what an unknown wizard was doing in a seemingly muggle area. But there was no one there except Dot, doubled over laughing to herself.

"Nice one, sis!" Harry laughed. Reaching down and grabbing a handful of snow. Sirius watched in confusion as he squished the snow together and hurled it at Mike who simply laughed and started gathering snow which he threw at Max. "Are you joining or what?" someone asked from inside the blizzard of snow which was being thrown around. Sirius wasn't really sure what exactly was meant to be going on but he bent down anyway and gathered up a large handful of snow, shaping it into a compact ball. He picked Max out of the group and threw the snowball with a surprising amount of force towards him. It hit Max right in the stomach, causing him to slip on an icy patch and fall over. Everyone laughed. Sirius laughed. He realised it was the first time he'd laughed in a very long time. His parents weren't exactly entertainers and the only children he knew were his cousins and the Malfoys who were as far from hilarious as it was possible to be.

"Nice shot, Sirius!" Max congratulated, picking himself up off the ground. "Your aim is magic."

"Don't be ridiculous," Mike corrected. "If he was a wizard he'd simply have blasted you with snow from his wand."

"Unless he can't tell us," Max laughed, letting the fantasy take over. "Imagine, wizards everywhere, living right under our noses and we don't notice them because they don't want to be seen. Then one day…"

"Oh shove off it, Max," Dot interrupted. "Harry will believe you if you're not careful and he's so annoying like that. Besides, you forgot to mention the witches." She looked up wistfully: "God, I wish magic was real. I'd love to be able to just summon whatever I wanted, it'd be so much easier."

Sirius wished that he could tell them the truth. They'd all be so excited. Maybe some of them would end up actually having magic, like muggle-born witches and wizards. But he couldn't tell them anything so he just nodded along with the so-called 'fantasy' and pretended it wasn't his reality.

Everything was perfect and Sirius was starting to wish that he could stay outside with the muggle children for the rest of Christmas. Despite how they'd all wished they had magic, Sirius was beginning to be jealous of them in return. He was jealous that they were able to get whatever they wanted, how they hoped some person called Santa would get them everything on their wish list. He was jealous of the sound of their Christmas parties where they had friends their age coming over and they didn't have to eat everything on their plate if they didn't like it. But most of all he was jealous of the how they talked about the fun of decorating the Christmas tree together, the whole family talking and laughing.

They were just about to start another snowball fight when a loud crash caused everyone to turn. The door of Number 12 had burst open and Walburga Black was standing in the doorway. The park wasn't that close to the street but he shouts still carried all the way to the group of children: "Sirius Orion Black, you come here this instant!"

'How could I have been so stupid?' Sirius mentally scolded himself. He'd been so lost in the excitement of finally having friends that he'd completely lost track of time. He didn't allow himself a look back as he made his way towards the house again.

The second the door to the outside world closed, Sirius felt the sting of his father's slap. "What were you thinking?" Orion asked. His voice was calm and quiet which, Sirius thought, was far worse than his mother's shrieks.

"It was snowing and it looked so pretty," Sirius tried to justify. "We were just playing…"

"Playing?" Walburga interrupted. "You are a Black, you do not _'play'_ and with filthy muggle scum of all things. Did we not raise you better than this?"

"But they were nice. I… I think that maybe we don't need to hate them. They can't do magic but if you ignored that then… then, really, they're just like us."

"Just like us?" Orion questioned, his voice rising. "Just like us? You are in the most pure family in all of Britain, generations of careful breeding to allow only the most powerful of blood to be passed on and you compare us to a group of powerless muggles!"

"I just don't understand why we hate them?"

"Because they are weak!" Walburga shrieked. "They think themselves our equals but we are above them. They would infect us all with their weakness if given the chance. We must, therefore, terrify them into submission or exterminate them before they can destroy us. There may be more of them but we will always be stronger. We are their betters!"

"Just one of those children is better than all of you," Sirius shouted, almost in tears. A burst of magic sent his parents stumbling backwards, allowing Sirius to run up to his room, all of the doors in the house slamming and locking behind him.

Of course they wouldn't understand. They would never understand. But a small part of Sirius had hoped that there would have been a shred of decency deep in his parent's hearts which would've understood and listened. Their magic combined with the muggle's ideas could create such beautiful things. But on its own, their 'pure' magic had become so stagnant and corrupted that all it could do was destroy.


End file.
